Friday, 15 September 2017

Google to launch a new payments product in India dubbed Tez

While Google is
expanding its mobile payments service Android Pay slowly and steadily, India -
world's second-largest smartphone market - is still not among the list of
countries where the service is available. That, however, doesn't mean the
company doesn't have any plans for the Asian country.

According to a new
report, the search giant is readying to enter the Indian digital payments
market. And no, we are not talking about Android Pay here. The report says the
company will very soon launch a entirely new service dubbed Tez, which means
fast in Hindi, one of the country's official languages.

In fact, one of the
staff writers of the publication whose report we're citing also tweeted a
screenshot of Google's application for Tez submitted back in June this year to
Indian government's agency dealing with trademarks, design, and patents.

Nothing much is known about the service at
the moment, except that it'll reportedly support the Indian government backed
payments platform - dubbed Unified Payments Interface (UPI) - as well as other
consumer services like Paytm and MobiKwik.

As you can see, the tweet says the service is
set for launch in India coming Monday, which is September 18. Reports say the
service will arrive as a dedicated app, and Google also has plans to launch
'Tez' in other Asian markets as well, including Indonesia and the Philippines.